“Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to
cross over?”
“I—I—don’t know.”
“You—you—don’t know?” mimicking my drawling manner of speech. “What _do_
you know?”
“I—I—nothing, for certain.”
“By the great Cæsar’s ghost, I believe you! You’re the stupidest
dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of
_you_ being a pilot—_you_! Why you don’t know enough to pilot a cow down
a lane.”
Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from one
side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would boil a
while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.
“Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points
for?”
I tremblingly considered a moment, and the devil of temptation provoked
me to say:
“Well—to—to—be entertaining, I thought.”
This was a red flag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was
crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because
he ran over the steering-gear of a trading-scow. Of course the traders
sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as
Mr. Bixby was; because he was brimful, and here were subjects who could
_talk back_. He threw open a window, thrust his head out and such an
eruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and farther
away the scowmen’s curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice
and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the window he was
empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and not caught
curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said to me in
the gentlest way:
“My boy, you must get a little memorandum book; and every time I tell
you a thing, put it down right away. There’s only one way to be a pilot,
and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just
like A B C.”
That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with
anything but blank cartridges. However, I did not feel discouraged long.
I judged that it was best to make allowances, for doubtless Mr. Bixby
was “stretching.” Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few strokes on
the big bell. The stars were all gone now, and the night was as black as
ink. I could hear the wheels churn along the bank, but I was not
entirely certain that I could see the shore. The voice of the invisible
watchman called up from the hurricane deck:
“What’s this, sir?”
“Jones’s plantation.”
I said to myself, “I wish that I might venture to offer a small bet that
it isn’t,” But I did not chirp. I only waited to see. Mr. Bixby handled
the engine bells, and in due time the boat’s nose came to the land, a
torch glowed from the forecastle, a man skipped ashore, a darkey’s voice
on the bank said, “Gimme de k’yarpet bag, Mass’ Jones,” and the next
moment we were standing up the river again, all serene. I reflected
deeply a while, and then said—but not aloud—“Well, the finding of that
plantation was the luckiest accident that ever happened; but it couldn’t
happen again in a hundred years.”